托福口语素材：大学的功能

　　考生在备考托福口语考试时，可以多积累一些比较不错的素材，遇到相关话题时可以灵活的加以运用。下面新东方在线托福网为大家带来托福口语素材：大学的功能一文，希望对大家托福备考有所帮助。更多精彩尽请关注新东方在线托福网!

　　The universities are schools of education, and schools of research. But the primary reason for their existence is not to be found either in the mere knowledge conveyed to the students or in the mere opportunities for research afforded to the members of the faculty.

　　大学是从事教学和科研的机构。但是大学存在的核心功能却既不是仅仅向学生传授知识，也不是为科研人员提供从事研究的机会。

　　The justification for a university is that it preserves the connection between knowledge and the zest of life, by uniting the young and the old in the imaginative consideration of learning. The university imparts information, but it imparts it imaginatively. At least, this is the function which it should perform for society. A university which fails in this respect has no reason for existence. This atmosphere of excitement, arising from imaginative consideration, transforms knowledge. A fact is no longer a bare fact: it is invested with all its possibilities. It is no longer a burden on the memory: it is energizing as the poet of our dreams, and as the architect of our purposes.

　　通过将年轻人和年长者在富有想象力的学习过程中关联起来，大学维系着传递知识与热爱生活的纽带，这是大学存在的正当理由。大学传递信息，而大学所传递的信息需要想象力作为媒介。至少，大学需要训练想象力这种能力，以服务于社会的需求。如果一所大学没能做到培养学生的想象力，那么它就没有存在的必要了。正是这种源自于想象力的思考以及由此引发的兴奋感转化知识。事实不再是纯粹的事实，而是孕育其中的无限可能性。知识不再是记忆的负担，它像诗人一样激励我们拥抱梦想，像建筑师一样指引我们达成目标。

　　Imagination is not to be divorced from the facts: it is a way of illumination the facts. It works by eliciting the general principles which apply to the facts, as they exist, and then by an intellectual survey of alternative possibilities which are consistent with those principles. It enables men to construct an intellectual vision of a new world, and it preserves the zest of life by the suggestion of satisfying purposes.

　　想象力不能脱离现实：想象力源于事实的启迪。想象力是这样起作用的：它引出适用于具体事实本身的一般规律，然后理性地概括同这些规律一致的种种可能性。想象力能够让人们在智识的层面构建一个新世界，想象力因提供令人满意的建议，而使人们焕发出对生活的恒久热情。

　　Youth is imaginative, and if the imagination be strengthened by discipline this energy of imagination can in great measure be preserved through life. The tragedy of the world is that those who are imaginative have but slight experience, and those who are experienced have feeble imaginations. Fools act on imagination without knowledge; pedants act on knowledge without imagination. The task of a university is to weld together imagination and experience.

　　年轻人是富有想象力的，如果这种想象力能够受到训练并被加强，它就能够在生命的长河中最大限度的保有活力。这个世界的悲剧在于：那些富有想象力的人鲜有经验，而那些有经验的人又缺乏想象力。愚人无智识而空想连篇，迂腐之人照本宣科却毫无想象力。而大学的职责在于将想象力和经验合二为一的融汇在一起。

　　These reflections upon the general functions of a university can be at once translated in terms of the particular functions of business school. We need not flinch from the assertion that the main function of such a school is to produce men with a greater zest for business. In a simpler world, business relations were simpler, being based on the immediate confrontation with all relevant material circumstances. Today business organization requires an imaginative grasp of the psychologies of populations engaged in differing modes of occupation; of populations scattered through cities, through mountains, through plains; of populations on the ocean, and of populations in mines, and of populations in forests.

　　对大学功能的思考可以具体转化为对一所商学院功能的思考。我们应该勇敢承认这个假设，商学院的主要功能就是培养对做生意具有巨大热情的人。在简单的世界中，生意关系也相应简单，所有相关物质状况直接接洽碰撞。今天的商业组织需要对客户群体心理的把握，这是需要想象力的，这些群体从事不同的职业，散居在城市，山地，平原，海洋，矿产，或是森林。

　　It requires, an imaginative grasp of conditions in the tropics, and of conditions in temperate zones. It requires an imaginative grasp of the interlocking interests of great organizations, and of the reactions of the whole complex to any change in one of its elements. It requires an imaginative understanding of laws of political economy, not merely in the abstract, but also with the power to construe them in terms of the particular circumstances of a concrete business. It requires some knowledge of the habits of government, and of the variations of those habits under diverse conditions.

　　今天的商业组织需要对热带和温带状况的了解和把握，这也需要想象力。该组织需要了解大组织之间的各种利益关联，以及复合整体对其中任何一种因素的变化所做出的相应反应。该组织还需要认识到政治经济中的规律，这种认识不仅仅是抽象的认知，而是在具体的一桩生意中某个具体情况下有能力去对这些规律进行解释说明。该组织还应该了解政府的惯例，以及在多种不同状况下的这些形形色色的政府惯例。

　　It requires an imaginative vision of the binding forces of any human organization, a sympathetic vision of the limits of human nature and of the conditions which evoke loyalty of service. It requires some knowledge of the laws of health, and of the laws of fatigue, and of the conditions for sustained reliability. It requires an imaginative understanding of the social effects of the conditions of factories. It requires a sufficient conception of the role of applied science in modern society. It requires that discipline of character which can say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to other men, not by reason of blind obstinacy, but with firmness derived from a conscious evaluation of relevant alternatives.

　　这样的商业组织要求任何一种人力机构都要通力合作，因为懂得人性和局势的局限性，因此要求忠诚地服务于组织，这需要想象力。这样的商业组织需要了解人们的健康，疲惫，持续可靠的工作的规律。这样的组织还需要了解工厂的状况会产生的社会效应，需要充分了解应用科学在当代社会中的角色。该组织需要有原则的对其他人做出‘接受’或是‘拒绝’的回复，这种回复是出于有意识的对相关选项的衡量，而不是盲目的顽固倔强。

　　The universities have trained the intellectual pioneers of our civilization-the priests, the lawyers, the statesmen, the doctors the men of science, and the men of letters. The conduct of business now requires intellectual imagination of the same type as that which in former times has mainly passed into those other occupations. There is one great difficulty which hampers all the higher types of human endeavor. In modern times this difficulty has even increased in its possibilities for evil. In any large organization the younger men, who are novices, must be set to jobs which consist in carrying out fixed duites in obedience to orders.

　　大学培养了我们文明社会的知识分子先驱：牧师，律师，议员，医生，科学家，文学家。做生意需要的想象力，同之前时代中培养这些知识分子所需要的智识上的想象力是一样的。有一种困境对这种高级形式的努力构成伤害。当代社会这种困境增加了促成邪恶的可能性。在任何一家大机构中，年轻人，俗称新手或菜鸟，必须顺从的去做那种程序既定的工作。

　　No president of a large corporation meets his youngest employee at his office door with the offer of the most responsible job which the work of that corporation includes. The young men are set to work at a fixed routine, and only occasionally even see the president as he passes in and out of the building. Such work is a great discipline. It imparts knowledge, and it produces reliability of character; also it is the only work for which the young men, in that novice stage, are fit, and it is the work for which they are hired. There can be no critism of the custom, but there may be an unfortunate effect---prolonged routine work dulls the imagination.

　　没有哪个大公司总裁会在办公室门口提供给菜鸟一个责任重大的职位。年轻人被安排在常规职位上从事日常既定的工作内容，只是在总裁进出工作大楼时，才会偶尔看到他。这种工作是种巨大的束缚。这种工作传授知识，塑造可以信赖的性格，但是这是年轻人在初入职场阶段的仅有选择。这种工作也青睐雇用年轻人。 这种做法不是无可指责的，这种做法有可能带来的消极影响就是：加长版的常规工作的操练会毁掉想象力。

　　The way in which a university should function in the preparation for an intellectual career, such as modern business or one of the older professions, is by promoting the imaginative consideration of the various general principles underlying that career. Its students thus pass into their period of technical apprenticeship with their imaginations already practiced in connecting details with general principles. The routine then receives its meaning, and also illuminates the principles which give it that meaning. Hence, instead of a drudgery issuing in a blind rule of thumb, the properly trained man has some hope of obtaining an imagination disciplined by detailed facts and by necessary habits.

　　大学在训练青年人走上那些诸如当代商业或是传统中那些需要智识的职业岗位时，需要训练提升青年人的想象思考力，以满足这些职业中所需要的去考虑各种各样的规则的要求。因此那些获准进入学徒阶段的学生已经能够运用想象力使得原则联系细节。因此日常工作就具有了意义，同时提示赋予这种工作意义背后的原则。因此，受过良好训练的职员有望借助事实细节和必要的习惯获得想象力而不是单凭主观经验行事。

　　Thus the proper function of a university is the imaginative acquisition of knowledge. Apart from this importance of the imagination, there is no reason why business men, and other professional men, should not pick up their facts bit by bit as they want them for particular occasions. A university is imaginative or it is nothing---at least nothing useful.

　　因此大学的功能应该是培养借助想象力而获取知识。训练想象力是最重要的，除此之外，找不出任何理由去解释为什么商人和其他职业人士不选择通过经历每一个具体状况，一点一滴的积累经验。一所大学如果没有训练学生的想象力，那么它的存在就毫无用处。

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